After nearly four years and thousands of posts, this will be my last as an official Lifehacker writer. In keeping with the tradition of last days, I have some special stories, secrets, and life lessons to share. Let's get sentimental!

How I Got Here, Why I'm Leaving, and What I've Learned

I applied for a Lifehacker internship on April 14th, 2010, and here we are exactly four years later. The letter I sent to Adam Pash explains how I got here and hints at why I'm leaving:

DIY is a huge part of my life. I've worked for a number of web startups and so I am plagued with the desire for an efficient and organized lifestyle. More than all of that, my dream is to be a writer. I'm torn between writing about technology and the future and the world and writing for the screen. I love them both. And so I'm sending this e-mail because I'd love a chance to explore the possibility of working for one of my favorite blogs.

(Because my portfolio has since changed, I replaced the links in my letter with the Lifehacker posts that resulted from my initial interests.)

Advertisement

I never actually expected to hear back from Pash after sending an email. In fact, I'd forgotten I'd even sent it when I heard back from him three weeks later. I met him at his apartment and he interviewed me while we walked to a 7-11. He offered me the internship when we got back. After two months, I became a full-time writer. I learned three extremely valuable lessons from this experience:

You don't get shit you don't ask for. I got the internship because I asked for it. I got the job because I asked to write to prove I could and then asked for the job as soon as I knew I'd accomplished that. I don't always get what I ask for, but I usually do. With the right timing, luck, and a solid argument, you'll get what you want more often than not. It's the people who don't ask that don't get shit.

Never take timing and luck for granted. No matter how good you are, there are so many reasons things do or do not work out. I ended up at Lifehacker because I happened to express interest at just the right time. I was actually one of the last emails Pash received, but it didn't get lost in the influx because I sent mine days after most everyone else. And I kept it short. And I happened to have a background in web video when he wanted to expand Lifehacker's video offerings. Luck and timing matter, and you can't control them. Sometimes they work in your favor to do amazing things. Other times they don't. While I also had to not suck at this job, that wasn't enough to get it. I was the right person at the right place at the right time. At any other point in Lifehacker's history, I probably would've been passed over.

I'm not that great. Neither are you. Most of us are pretty flawed and imperfect. Thanks to the harsh demeanor of the internet, I've had to face a lot of them. Some have been pointed out to me kindly, and others in some pretty horrific ways. I still feel bad when I think about some of the really awful things people have said. But because of the good and the bad, I've gained a good dose of humility and realism. I know that I always have room for improvement and that I don't need to fix everything about me. I just need to keep an open mind and expect that I can learn something from everyone.

If we're being fair, working at Lifehacker also taught me how to manage my time, pick the right battles, get out of debt, budget my money, how to work with extreme efficiency, and fix just about every bad habit I brought to the job. After all, I don't bite my nails anymore and I truly believed that would never happen. This job has taught me so much about how to be a better person. I've learned so much just by working here, seeing so many amazing approaches to problems solving, and being encouraged to discover my own. Those lessons above, however, are among the most important I've learned in my entire life.

When combined, courage, realism, and humility are human superpowers.

My Long-Held Pranks and Easter Eggs

I've been hiding pranks and easter eggs on Lifehacker since shortly after I started as full-time writer, waiting until the day I wrote this post to share them with everyone. A few of you may have figured them out over the years, but I think they've mostly gone unnoticed. Let's find out!

WTF Image: Most of you know me as a Lifehacker writer, but for most of my time here I've also served as the art director. This doesn't mean I'm responsible for the site's design and layout—that credit belongs to Gawker—but rather the images you see at the top of our original posts. We now have a design team that does the majority of them, but at one point it was just me. And sometimes, the images were seriously weird. (For example, I'm still not sure what I was thinking with this one.) While it started with me, any time a designer has put together a bizarre picture for a post, it gets tagged wtfimage and placed on the corresponding tag page. If you want to see Lifehacker's ongoing chronicle of strange visual editorial art, bookmark it. I have a feeling it'll continue to see updates long after I'm gone—especially because I still hope to contribute a few in the future, just for fun.

When looking back on these pranks, I feel like I didn't do enough. There isn't a single poop prank, which I think everyone who knows me well enough probably expected. Or maybe there is one out there somewhere. Perhaps no one will ever know...

What's Next for Me

If you actually read this entire thing, you might have some idea of what's next for me. I recently wrote a book with my dear friend and platonic life partner Erica Elson which we are trying to make into a movie. While this is a starting point for my long-term goal of creating television and movies, my heart is in a lot of places. Technology and the ways of the future will always shape a major part of who I am. Even though I'm leaving Lifehacker to pursue something different, I'm not letting go of those things.

Advertisement

I loved the Lifehacker podcast. It was something I pushed to make happen here, and it was always the highlight of my week. I'd even often join in when I was on vacation. I know some of you weren't ready to say goodbye and neither am I. I'm going to by working with the folks over at 5by5 to create a spiritual successor to the podcast in the next couple of weeks. It won't be exactly the same for a number of probably obvious reasons, but it'll still be really awesome and I hope you'll all continue to listen.

So, if you want to keep up with me post-Lifehacker, here's how you can do that:

I've had an incredible time here at Lifehacker, writing with some of the most talented people I've ever met and for some of the most awesome people on the internet. There are quite a few readers out there I can call friends, and that's certainly also the case for my soon-to-be former coworkers.

I will truly miss having a home here at Lifehacker, but am excited for what's next. Thanks for taking this crazy trip with me, and I hope to see you in the future.